Yesterday I received a social media message from a virtual friend.

“Hi, this is ridiculously short notice, but I am in town, wondering if you’d like to meet up for coffee. What do you think?”

I replied, ”You are ridiculous. So am I. Call me.”

We connected later that same day, getting together and talking for hours about friends, family, and writing. 

We had been introduced through an online writing class specifically for adoptees. Until today, he was confined to that small box that so many of us have come to expect this past two years for education, conferences, work, and even weddings. This new normal that can bring us together with others we have no expectation to meet in person. We may not even know what they look like. In this circumstance, though, we could recognize each other, having shared many weeks of in-depth, personal accounts of our lives within a writing prompt assignment.

As an adoptee, separate is familiar. My idea of family and friends may be very different than for someone raised by their biological parents or related family members. My own experience has been that family doesn’t resemble you and friends who aren’t adopted will probably never really understand you. Good friends will try. It is not unusual for me to have connections with people who at times feel like “family.” I also have family members (who are part of my life memories) I would not spontaneously coordinate plans, meet for coffee, or invite for dinner. There are so many reasons these relationships are complicated, layered, and create conversations that make people emotionally uncomfortable.

Being together and pulling apart is like breathing for me. I used to hold my breath a lot with people who were supposed to love and support me. Writing about life, love, loss, reunion, rejection as an adoptee has been an expression that I didn’t know I needed to facilitate ongoing healing. My Adoptee Voices classmates have taken my breath away many times. There is a difference in forgetting to breathe and being in the presence of honest, vulnerable, revealing phrases that echo parts of my own story, allowing me to exhale. Being present in my own framed box, listening to adoptee writers of many voice textures, fast cadence or deliberate, slow … hear what I am saying for the very first time. 

I recently heard that “a safe child is a curious child.” Adopted children grow into adopted adults. This shared-experience group shows up and encourages the uniqueness of our individual journeys. I have witnessed a sweet voice telling an angry truth, a decisive tone sharing what had not yet been spoken outside their own thoughts. I have heard, “tonight I am listening, not able to string words together this time.”

So much can happen inside our unexpressed minds. It is like a living secret. Covid, scary to talk about, as it spreads us into isolation. We have re-lived this over the last few years within a pandemic environment. Adoption is a different form of seclusion. These writing companions have protected our inner children as collective voices share in this attentive place. We each have many reasons and earned excuses to not be brave or ask questions. We have grown, speaking from our hearts as our stories bleed out. We come together in this framed friendship and the surprise can come in the ridiculously unexpected possibility of breathing the same air. 

Here we are, friends casually chatting outside, not gazing at a computer screen, but out of the box, in person, real life. There is the sound of splashing water from a nearby fountain, sun high, as a hummingbird passes through the words between us, hovers long enough, observing the buzz of its wings, disappearing just as quickly as it arrived.